


A gentlewoman's ways

by meinposhbastard



Series: 2019 tropes fic challenge [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Crowley's Snake Tongue, F/F, Female-Presenting Aziraphale (Good Omens), Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Fluff and Humor, Genderswap, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-22 23:49:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20000509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: She didn’t know how it started or when or even if there was a defining moment in time that she should look back on. In hindsight, they’d been around each other for millennia. Certainly more than your average human has been around their partner. Well, except that century Crowley decided to skip. But that was like a blink and you miss it sort of moment.She knew, however, when she had become aware of it.





	A gentlewoman's ways

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Xim, for the quick beta! :3
> 
> Years since my last GO fic and here I am giving in and writing the shortest piece of fic this year for me. Hope you enjoy!

***

Crowley looked at the angel, sitting in her chair on Crowley’s right side, cradling the white mug of tea with the little wing, and realized that something had been bothering her for some time now. And it had to do with the angel.

_Obviously._

“What happened, angel?” she asked, narrowing her yellow eyes a bit at her. 

Aziraphale hummed, her gaze still lost in the mid distance. “Whatever do you mean, my dear?”

“No, something’s not right here. Something’s been off with you. What is it?”

Aziraphale glanced at her, surprise flashing in her eyes for a fraction of a second before it was gone. But Crowley knew how not to blink for long periods of time so she caught that like a snake catches its prey.

“Nothing is wrong.”

“I don’t believe you. Out with it, angel.”

“Nothing is wrong, Crowley,” she repeated, taking a sip and proceeding to scrunch up her nose and look down at the contents of her mug as if someone put something else in it instead of tea. 

“You’re feeling out of sorts,” Crowley wheedled.

“No.”

“You’ve had another row with Upstairs.”

“No such thing. They’ve refrained from communicating with me since the Apocalypse That Was Not.”

“That tea gave you indigestion.”

A chuckle, before stealing a glance at Crowley— even though stealing might have been a preposterous thought considering that Crowley hadn’t taken her eyes off Aziraphale. “Crowley, my dear, everything is as right as rain.”

“Even rain slants when wind comes howling.”

A spark entered her blue eyes. “Is it wise of you to not take up poetry? I believe you could tempt many a romantic soul into doing unspeakably decadent things with your words alone. And you wouldn’t even have to leave the comfort of your flat.”

Crowley raised an eyebrow. “I’m not nice and I’m not wise. Besides, are you inciting me to temptation, angel?”

A light flush spread over her cheeks and Crowley grinned rakishly, but Aziraphale wasn’t meeting her eyes, instead miracling herself hot tea and sipping as if she was trying to learn the correct way to do it. Crowley’s grin dissolved and she seethed into her glass of wine. It was during moments like those that she found the angel so tightly wounded that it was impossible for her to unravel Aziraphale; to really get to the core of the problem. They hadn’t been great communicators across the ages, but Crowley prided herself with a certain acuity in regards to her angel’s thoughts, even those she’d rather keep hidden from prying eyes.

And Crowley’s eyes were nothing if not prying.

She didn’t know how it started or when or even if there was a defining moment in time that she should look back on. In hindsight, they’d been around each other for millennia. Certainly more than your average human has been around their partner. Well, except that century Crowley decided to skip. But that was like a blink and you miss it sort of moment.

She knew, however, when she had become aware of it.

“Get thee behind me, foul fiend!” Aziraphale had said with a stern look only for her rigid features to melt into her angelic smile moments later, and motion for Crowley to precede her. “After you.”

Suffice to say that Crowley had been taken aback for a second there, the pause that followed worrying at something inside Crowley. That was when she had realized how much attention Aziraphale reserved for Crowley, but in ways that Crowley never saw coming or even expected.

Here Aziraphale was opening a door for Crowley and letting her pass through first. 

There Aziraphale was steering their walk towards a path in St. James that they haven’t taken in a long time, her hand resting briefly on the small of Crowley’s back.

Here her angel was bestowing that beatific smile upon Crowley whenever she did something for Aziraphale (almost always when it was Aziraphale phrasing it in such a way as to _make_ Crowley want to indulge the angel only because she went to great lengths to circle around what she really wanted to say).

There her supposed enemy was, indulging Crowley’s voyeuristic tendencies when she partook of human food with the abandon and utter joy of someone who had not known how pleasurable food could be.

And she hadn’t.

Which was why Crowley had unconsciously begun fostering that tendency until they were dining at the Ritz in London and everybody around them melted into oblivion the moment Aziraphale’s order was placed in front of her and she began partaking of the meal or dessert with the elegance of a queen.

And she was so much more than that.

But it had jarred her completely when Aziraphale had told her that she went too fast for her angel. It had taken her a long time to put her demonic brain back together and into a functioning state.

She hadn’t been able to figure out why it felt like the angel reached inside her vessel and wrenched out her guts. She hadn’t even known it bothered her so much until they next convened and Aziraphale behaved like nothing had happened.

“Are you sleepwalking again, my dear?” Aziraphale asked one evening, not long after their last conversation, when Crowley mumbled to herself about how annoying it was to find the thread that unraveled everything.

“Beg your pardon?” Even her dark tinted glasses seemed to slide down her nose just so she could fix her full attention on the angel.

Her eyes did the dithering thing where they fluttered over Crowley for short moments at a time before searching for something else to lie on.

“I asked if you were sleepwalking, but that does not seem to be the case.”

She frowned. “I don’t sleep walk!” Pause. “Do I?”

“Well.” She paused, too, as if searching for words. “There was that time during the sixteenth cen—”

“What?” Crowley blinked, surprised by this revelation. By what it implied. “Are you saying you checked on me while I was sleeping the century away?”

Again the wandering eyes. “Well, you disappeared my dear. I thought— I thought a lot of things. Perhaps Downstairs called you back. Or you were trapped. Or Upstairs found out about our Agreement and— well, did what they do best.”

“Annoy you with their holier-than-thou attitude and their dimwittedness?”

“Really, Crowley, no need to insult us.”

“Are we still considering Upstairs and Downstairs an ‘us’?” she couldn’t help but ask, feeling ire surging up at the very notion. “Didn’t we decide that we were on our side? Didn’t we make it _clear_ to both sides that there was a third option and we chose that?” 

Now Aziraphale looked positively out of sorts, as if Crowley just slapped her.

“But we digressed. You were implying that you looked for me when I was sleeping.”

Aziraphale didn’t quite meet her gaze. “Indeed. Found you in a wine cellar, tucked away from prying eyes.”

She grinned, remembering. “Yes, what better way to fully wake up than to sip from a glass of well-preserved, old wine?”

“As it were.”

“Did I say anything?”

“Not as such. You did mumble and wanted to get up, but I gently pushed you back and— might have calmed your mind.”

Crowley blinked deliberately. “You— calmed my mind.”

Aziraphale nodded, glancing sideways at her. 

“With your fingers.”

Her body unraveled all at once in her seat in that way a tight wounded snake did when it was released from its bounds.

The angel didn't meet her eyes. “You must understand that performing any sort of miracle on a— well, a demon, requires a certain… amount of physical contact at least.”

Crowley cocked her head, eyes roaming over Aziraphale and hummed contemplatively.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Aziraphale said.

She felt the creases at the corner of her eyes. “Like what?”

“Like you’ve just learned a new way of tempting me.”

“Well,” she drawled, leaning back on the little sofa in Aziraphale’s bookshop. “Even demons learn new tricks.”

And that was that.

Matters calmed down afterwards— if there was something to be calmed down. They returned to their little dance around each other, touching but not touching, looking but not for too long, smiling but just enough to be considered polite and amiable— 

No. Aziraphale did not, for all intents and purposes, excel at restraining her smiles.

The angel was so bad at controlling her face that Crowley was amazed that she had managed to fool Crowley’s superiors.

And once Crowley took notice of her smiles it was impossible for her to ignore them.

But she relished Aziraphale’s attention. Just like she relished drinking in her angel when she ate, the full unraveling of such an innocent temptation (if there ever was a temptation that could be called innocent) keeping Crowley’s whole attention in the then and there like nothing else ever could.

And if the angel moaned a little too much and a little too loud, and if she took her time closing her lips over the forkful of dessert she took, dragging them over the dents with just as much patience as she dedicated herself to her rare books, then all the more for Crowley to drink in. 

Decadence looked positively sinful on someone as innocent and pure as her angel. The others could have rotten in heaven for all Crowley cared. There was only one (1) pure angel in all that flock and she was staring right at her. Crowley was going to enjoy every single fraction of a moment she could get from watching Aziraphale indulge in her hedonistic tendencies, and she’d do that without hiding behind her sunglasses.

Until her snake tongue darted out to taste the air with that little hiss accompanying it and they both froze.

Neither looked like they were even capable of recalling how words were even formed, as Crowley willed her tongue to return to a wider and plumper state.

Crowley slid back up her sunglasses and took a sip of her wine.

They said nothing after that and Crowley tucked the incident in with other memories she was not in any hurry to recall.

But something must have been put into motion afterwards because Crowley found herself wishing to rile up her angel more and more. Not because she intended to see the end of this dance around each other, but because she wanted to see how far she could push until her angel snapped.

She had no idea why she felt so reckless all of a sudden, but she knew for sure that she was not going to continue with following this particular dance for much longer.

So she opened doors for her angel (re: made them open without ever laying her hands on a handle), and stood more to attention when she spoke, and even offered her seeds when they were in St. James’ Park so she could feed them to the ducks. Never mind that she suspected they had ears that they used to spy on them. It was all worth it for the look of surprise that crossed over her angel’s face every time Crowley did not follow their pre-ordained dance.

But all this teasing came to a sudden halt when Crowley entered Aziraphale’s bookshop one rare sunny afternoon and the angel called from the back that she’d be with her in a moment.

Obviously Crowley was not one to be kept waiting, or liked waiting for that matter, so she sauntered between the shelves towards the back where she found her angel bent over an old manuscript in lambskin with a magnifying glass over one eye.

“My dear, this is marvelous!” she began without even looking up at Crowley as she stood at the edge of Aziraphale’s desk, only peering once at the gibberish incised on the skin. “I’ve been on the lookout for this manuscript for centuries! And at last! The man holding this in his collection finally died and it was auctioned off.”

Crowley grinned, the surge of anticipation and giddiness familiar whenever her angel slipped and said things that she shouldn’t.

“A bit un-angelic of you to wish for someone’s death, isn’t it?”

She fluttered the free hand, adjusting the magnifying glass. “Nonsense,” she muttered, not quite paying attention to their conversation. “All humans die at one point or another. This one died of old age.”

“Bet you considered more than once miracling an incurable disease on him so he could die faster.”

“That is absurd!” said Aziraphale, pushing back in her chair to frown at Crowley. “I would never—”

And as she predicted, Aziraphale’s words died in her throat as she took Crowley in. Crowley even crossed her arms and made herself some space on the cluttered desk to prop her thigh on it just to drive in her point.

“What’s the matter, angel?” she drawled, deliberately letting her voice drop to that sultry tone of voice that she knew made humans shudder in pleasure, but she was curious if it had the same effect on an angel. 

“What—” She swallowed even if she had no need for it. “What are you wearing, my dear?”

“Hm?” She took off her sunglasses and placed them in her suit jacket’s breast pocket. “Oh, this? It’s just my suit.”

“It’s— it’s white.”

“That it is.” She smiled. “Wanted a change.”

Aziraphale shot up from her chair which startled Crowley, but she did not move from her perch on the desk. Aziraphale looked as if she was not sure what she intended to do with herself or why she stood up in the first place, her eyes going from object to object to Crowley to object to Crowley’s suit to object.

Then she stepped up to Crowley and she untucked Crowley’s red tie from beneath the buttoned suit jacket, pulling a bit before she caught herself, her hand relaxing from its grip, caressing the silk tie like she couldn’t help herself, and looked up at Crowley as if she had done the most horrendous thing in the world.

Aziraphale tucked the tie back beneath the overlapping edges of her jacket.

“You should be more careful with your tie,” she said, her hand patting the tie, then hesitating, then patting it once again in a riling show of how startled birds beat their wings.

Not that startled birds riled Crowley up, but Aziraphale’s hands, her touch and restraint, did.

Her hand shot up lightning fast as Aziraphale was retreating, seeing the intention in her eyes to step back. Not if Crowley had any say in it.

“Angel,” she said, low and scalding. “Is something the matter? I thought I’d see how much I could annoy you, but I wouldn’t describe as annoyance what I’m seeing in your eyes right now.” The corner of her eyes creased with the kind of smile that she felt more in her chest than on her face.

Aziraphale’s hand was soft and warm in Crowley’s, and she coaxed her angel closer until she had to look Crowley in the eyes and show her the naked want that was hiding in the midst of her dark gaze. Just as fast as her hand shot up to stop her angel, she made a decision right there and then.

She pushed her hand in Aziraphale’s soft hair, guiding her into pressing her lips to Crowley’s before she pushed back and kissed her angel like a modern man eats food after fasting for a day. Aziraphale expelled a shuddering exhale against Crowley’s lips, and Crowley knew that she was getting under her angel’s borrowed skin.

One moment Crowley was perched on the desk, drawing her angel closer still into her, the next her back was pressed against the opposite wall, Aziraphale devouring her in the most exquisite ways possible.

She had the presence of mind to snap her fingers and will the main lights to turn off, the sign to switch to ‘closed’ and the roller blinds to fall down. The only light in the bookshop was the lamp on Aziraphale’s desk— and the smoldering desire within the depths of her eyes, if she felt like being poetic.

With her around, Crowley found that the poetic vein throbbed incessantly. She might, indeed, pay heed to her angel’s suggestion.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale said and Crowley realized that she didn’t have a fevered and impatient angel plastered to herself anymore. She blinked. “I am mauling you against a wall. How unbecoming.”

No. Not in all seven kinds of hell was she allowing her angel to put any more distance between them. One hand gripped the lapels of her suit jacket and pulled with such force that Aziraphale slammed unceremoniously against Crowley, their noses pressed against each other.

“I’m not nice and I’m not wise. And you’re certainly not a gentle-angel,” she hissed, and hurt crossed Aziraphale’s eyes at that last part. “Not now,” Crowley continued. “I don’t want you to be gentle.”

The hurt melted away from her features in an instant, replaced by that naked want and desire that Crowley was becoming so addicted to seeing. Pleasure made her angel look positively decadent as she pressed Crowley against the wall, her hands beneath Crowley’s jacket, making their way underneath her waistband of her trousers.

“Only if you show me your snake tongue.”

The request shook Crowley to the core, feeling as if her eyes might pop out of their sockets. And as if Aziraphale had full control over Crowley’s body her tongue morphed into the thin, long and forked tongue, darting past her lips to taste the air. Aziraphale kissed her lips red with the kind of confidence and hunger that made Crowley’s knees go weak, moaning in pleasure when Crowley’s tongue twisted and untwisted around Aziraphale’s.

“I’m not sure I’m able to resist your temptation this time, angel,” she said breathlessly because if they were going to kiss, then Crowley was going to enjoy it to the maximum.

“Good, because I stopped resisting your allure a very long time ago, my dear,” Aziraphale breathed out, her eyes black pools which Crowley was shaking with anticipation to leap in.

Crowley stared. “Oh.”

Aziraphale smiled that sweet, beatific smile of hers and in that moment Crowley realized an important thing before Aziraphale dove in to devour her lips again. That was what a wicked smile looked like on an angel’s face.


End file.
